Sriracha Popcorn Recipe

One thing I hate is when there’s not enough contents left in a bottle of sauce or tub of yogurt to do anything with it, but too much to throw out without feeling guilty.

We had this exact situation in the Foundry household a couple nights ago, when I found the sriracha (Thai hot sauce) bottle sitting next to the sink (in Venessa’s patented “Joe, I put this here so you’d wash it out” spot).

I couldn’t let this precious mouth-watering nectar go to waste, so I decided I’d try to make popcorn with it. The popcorn turned out AWESOME, Venessa mentioned it to a friend on Facebook (giving it a lukewarm review. Thanks, honey!), and a friend of that friend requested the recipe (despite the lukewarm review). Since facebook is private, I figured I’d put it here to share it with the world.

Two servings of Sriracha Popcorn:

Ingredients:

Popping corn – a handful

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)* – 2 Tablespoons

Sriracha – 2 squeezes

Butter – 2 Tablespoons

Salt – to taste

* [edit: Venessa told me not to use EVOO because of its low smoke point. But I used it and things turned out OK. Caveat emptor.]

Put a medium sized pot on medium-high heat and pour in enough EVOO to barely coat the bottom (about 2 good “glugs” out of the bottle).

Pour a handful of popping kernels into the pot and put the lid on it. It always makes more than you think it will so err on the side of caution.

Watch the pot carefully (watched pots never boil water, but they will pop the heck out of popcorn). When the popping starts, grab the pot and the lid and give it a few good shakes (using a potholder).

When the popping slows down to about a pop per second, turn off the stove and empty the popcorn into a serving bowl.

Salt to taste. A large 3-finger pinch should do it.

Put the pot back on the stove, but leave the heat off. Put about 2T of butter into the pot. The heat of the pot will melt the butter. It may spray up so be careful. (1T of butter is like the size of the pat that they slice off the stick in butter and bread commercials. Also most butter wrappers have a little measuring guide printed onto the side.)

Squeeze 2 squeezes of sriracha into melted butter. It may spray up again so be careful.

Put the popcorn back into bowl to soak up the sriracha-butter magic you just made. Shake it around and pour it back into the serving bowl.

Prepare your mouth for the imminent onrush of awesomeness by saying the following out loud: “I JUST MADE SRIRACHA POPCORN FROM SCRATCH!!!!!”

You can actually buy pre-made bags of sriracha popcorn from J&D (the Bacon Salt guys). I know the J&D founders personally (we used to work together) and love ’em, but $5 a bag is highway robbery! This recipe is about 50 cents worth of ingredients and 5 minutes of your time.

Most of the credit for this recipe goes to Venessa since this is pretty much her popcorn recipe, but with sriracha added at the end.

So there ya go! Enjoy! Maybe I’ll do more recipes, but how can you top this one?

* I even tried to condense the recipe but it’s still way too long for a tweet: “cook handful kernels in 2T EVOO on med-hi. Empty popcorn into bowl when popping finishes. Salt to taste. Melt 2T butter in cook pot. Squeeze 2 squeezes of sriracha into melted butter. Put popcorn back into bowl. Toss.”